Storyteller Spotlight: Meet Our May Spark of Hope Cast

This month we’re hosting our second storytelling night at Dave & Buster’s in Virginia Beach. I am so

excited about this show because we have a wide variety of speakers and amazing sponsors.

Our next Spark of Hope Storytelling Night is May 31, 2019 6:30 p.m. at Dave & Buster’s in Lynnhaven Mall. You can snag a ticket to see our show here.

This event is sponsored by #MyStrengthisBeautiful, an organization centered on empowering
survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. You can learn more about them at
www.msibforever.org

Good Girl Chronicles LLC would also like to thank the National Alliance on Mental Illness (COASTAL Chapter), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of the Darkness Walk Chair Katherine Martinez, and the Peer Recovery Specialists from the City of Norfolk. These three organizations will have resources tables at our event.

Storyteller Spotlight:
Little Lee - This kid is only 5 years old but he’s an author, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker.

He makes videos that teaches kids about everything from fire trucks to math. You can follow him on
Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook.

Danita Myanne - Danita Myanne is a woman of all trades. She’s a mother, college grad, author,
artist, and depression overcomer. She jumped out on faith and started her own paint business
called The Fenix Experience. And, today she will tell you about her super power “overcoming depression” and learning to love herself again.

M.E. Hart-   I met our next storyteller at an open mic event  in Virginia Beach.

I heard his soulful voice, and powerful poetry and I knew I had to have him in our show.

He has made a career out of using her trials into a testimony that empowers others.

He was featured on 2 oprah winfrey shows about male sexual abuse in 2010.

And, bravely spoke about his trauma. He also has published a powerful book called

The Thriver’s Quest Healing Life’s Trauma. M.E. Hart is a member of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Networks Speaker Bureaus. He is an actor, attorney and certified executive coach.

Tyler Layne Tyler Layne is a pop recording artist, YouTube creator and influencer,
TV news producer, and former iHeartRadio host. The singer/songwriter posts music videos
and mashups to his YouTube channel weekly for his 170,000+ subscribers. Tyler’s videos have
garnered over 16 million views on the platform. The social media influencer has a Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook reach totaling over 150,000. Tyler is also a producer for Richmond, Virginia’s news
station WTVR CBS 6. As a personality for iHeartRadio, Tyler hosted the nightly show Tyler’s
Trending on Norfolk, Virginia’s top 40 station NOW 105 for two years.
Upon releasing his original single “Breathe” which details a personal mental health battle,
Tyler advocated for suicide prevention and today volunteers for various philanthropic agencies.

Cora Johnson : Cora Johnson is a 46 years old, a mother of four children two boys two girls and a

grandmother of one grandson AJ.Cora loves to cook especially gumbo. When she’s not  spending time with the family she enjoy reading books traveling and exploring all the beautiful parts of Virginia. After working on a job for 20 years in Texas she retired and move her from Texas. Cora believes it is important and inspiring to be transparent to others letting it be known to not let situations define you just simply keep it moving and God will do the rest.

Danielle McDowell & Ari Boose -

Ari Boose is a senior at Princess Anne High School and a youth advocate/founder of SLAM (Share,

Learn, Aspire, and Mentor) Youth and Young Adult Support group in Hampton Roads. She uses her lived experience of overcoming challenges in life to aspire young people to reach their goals.

Danielle McDowell is a Resident in Counseling, Best-selling Author of Life & Lyrics: Through Danielle's Eyes, and professional speaker. She uses her background in mental health and lived experience of surviving sexual assault, homelessness, and life challenges to educate, motivate, and aspire her community to build the skills needed to live healthy, happy lives.

Danielle McDowell, Resident in Counseling and Ari Boose, youth advocate will be sharing their shared journey of overcoming mental illness and life challenges through a short skit that highlights significant moments in their lives. They will use journal entries that highlight a year in their life and obstacles they have faced reaching their goals. Step back in time with them and experience how life can bring difficulty but provide great joy!

Vernard “The Laugh Therapist” Hines He is a Norfolk native.
Vernard retired from the U.S. Army after 20 years and now serves up
a unique blend of humor on stages, radio shows, and to veterans organizations across the country.
Vernard says it the memories from his second tour in Iraq that helped him get his unique show name

. When Vernard returned home he sought therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and often
used humor to talk to his friends about it. The jokes seemed to give him relief and seemed to
be a ray of hope for others. It was then Hines realized his pain could be turned into purpose.
He decided to call himself ‘The Laugh Therapist’,  a comic who blends mental health, faith,
and humor.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Life in a Pit

For a good part of my teenage life, I was on solid ground. I could slip my shoes off and run my feet along soft, green blades of grass. I could raise my head and feel the warmth of the sun.

I could spread my arms wide, twirl, dance.

I had friends. I had dreams. I had hope for a future. I had the drive to put one foot in front of the other every day.

Then small rocks started to appear on my once green pasture. The more I walked, the more rocks appears. Over time the pebble size rocks are now stones.

Life is foreign.

I discover my mom is having an affair, so my step father doesn't pay the electric bill in the dead of winter. We open the stove to heat the house. At night I hear muffled phone calls between them. My step dad was away at sea, my mom was working crazy hours.

When my step dad returns, they mention the word divorce.

It wasn’t long I stumbled in the mess of what was becoming my new normal.

I trip over one of the rocks in my once green pasture, somehow falling backwards. As I descend I can see grey clouds moving in, a storm is coming.

When I land I am in sticky,  brown mud, surrounded by tall walls of dirt. As if being in a pit is not bad enough—- rain slowly fills the bottom. Water is rising.

I think about death and dying. Lying back and letting the water fill my nostrils, my lungs, my body—until I fade to black.

Suicidal thoughts, give way to desires, plans, and things I am too afraid to even speak out loud. Scared to confess. Pain I don’t want to acknowledge.

My body reacts. I feel like a knifis is piercing my heart sometimes, unable to breathe, unable to escape.

The doctor says I have anxiety disorder. He gives me a bottle of blue pills. I see a white lady and talk to her about my problems.

For a while I function..

I smile, I graduate high school. I land a fancy job. I smile. I work . I pay bills.

But I am never ever out of the pit. I never again experience the firm, solid ground I once knew as a kid.

After years of never feeling the sun, I lie back into the slow, rising water. I give in. I surrender to the pit.

I survive the attempt on my life. A part of me I fear will never be the same.

In the psych ward, I am surrounded by survivors; other people existing in their own pits, accepting that maybe this is what life will be like for us always. Sometimes we’re out and sometimes we’re in.

I call out to God.. and HE says simple stands STAND. I discover the rising water is shallow.I was never at risk for drowning after all.

I muster all the strength I can— and I decide to not only stand, I decide to fight.  I dig my feet into the muddy sides of the pit walls. I sweat. I grunt. I climb.

I take meds, I talk to a shrink. I tell her secrets I never thought I would. It breaks me but I find a way to start putting myself back again.

When I am finally at the top of the pit - my arms are shaking. My heart is pounding . I’m exhausted. I exhale…. and slowly I feel the warmness of the sun. A feeling I had not felt in so long….

This is where I am most days. Soaking in the sun, my legs dangling over a pit known as major depression and anxiety. Everyday I fight to keep my head above the ledge.

I wonder what it will take to get to the top again—-those green pastures I see in the distance.

Will I ever hoist myself out? Is this what life is like—Fighting against the pit.  Falling in and standing up… Fighting back and climbing up..

The Future of My Messy Mental Health Memoir

Why I am Not Writing My Messy Mental Health Memoir

Every other month I go through my photos on Facebook and Instagram. I tell myself it will do me good to erase the visual reminders of mistakes I have made in my past, in case I consider giving the television business  another go. I scroll through my pictures deleting ones that are blurry, pictures of provocative selfies, or me lamenting about whatever shallow man I was chasing at the time. The further I scroll down through my Facebook albums, the deeper I go into the darkest days of my life. It’s like a timeline that chronicles my own personal descent into homelessness, unemployment, and despair.

I tell myself everytime, I am strong enough to face these pictures. Strong enough to face my past. Face that a suicide attempt and my subsequent major depressive episode robbed me of a life I had worked so hard for. But, I am never strong enough. I always cry. I always mourn. I always grieve. I cry for the woman in those pictures who didn’t know who she could trust, or how to fill the hole in her heart, how to repair the mess she made of her career, how to rebuild, how to start over, or how to become the woman she wanted to be. I cry for the woman who learned so many lessons the painful way.

2017, Year I Became Homeless

I feel shame, guilt, remorse, regret. Then I remember why I haven’t touched my messy memoir about this season of my life. I am in constant war with who I am today, who I was after my attempt and what I did to survive after.

I tell myself I will get back to my memoir when it doesn’t hurt so bad. I will finish when the war inside me stops. But, I wonder if the war ever ends. I am processing this struggle in therapy. When I pray I surrender my past to my Heavenly Father, but somehow I always end up picking it back up.

That is partly why I am not writing my messy, mental health memoir. And, even though I am a bold advocate and speaker about mental health, a large part of me fears what those close to me will say when they read how far my homelessness took me, and how much it almost broke me. They will read the times I wasn’t so strong, the times I wanted to give up, and the times I failed.  

2016, A month homeless & couch hopping

I am acknowledging this avoidance of my messy, mental health memoir in hopes of breaking free, writing through the pain, and one day publishing the story of my rebuilding.

I’ll share a part of the book I wrote last year. I have shared this at a few speaking events. This is how I plan to open the book:

The Broke Down McDonalds

An Excerpt from my messy mental health memoir

A Broke Down McDonalds : Prologue

    You ever see a new McDonald’s seemingly pop up in your neighborhood overnight? One day it was torn down, the next day it’s sparkly new, powered with WI-FI access, and double drive through lanes.

   

    I have often found myself upset at this process, and I don’t even really like McDonald’s. Whenever I see one of these makeover processes happening in my area I think, “Well that was a perfectly good McDonald’s. Why did they have to rebuild the whole thing? Couldn’t they have just renovated the inside, spruce up the yellow arches, or power washed the bricks?

    It seemed so wasteful to me that a large corporate company would spend millions of dollars renovating the old, dank, broke down McDonalds. Nevermind that we are finally in the 21st century and many of those buildings were made in the eighties. Nevermind the black crude I would often see wedged in the red tiled floors anytime I dared to go inside a McDonald’s for hot cakes. Or the reports of rats running into storage bins, or the many, many reports of high cholesterol and heart disease McDonald’s played a role in. I just always think,” Wasn’t there anything useful in the old McDonald’s, why did they have to tear it down.”

    Well I’m a lot like those old, broke down, dank McDonalds.

    Like a lot of the Golden Arch establishments I started off really good, and I had all the potential to be something amazing. But overtime so many bad elements started to taint  all the potential I had in life. Like the pink slime scandal when McDonalds was found out to be using fake meat, I surrounded myself with superficial friends, bad men, bought into an impossible pursuit of perfection, and passed it off as my personality. It was inauthentic, but with it I thought I was doing the right thing. But, I paid a high price for trying to live someone else’s life, and pass myself off as the perfect daughter, perfect employee, perfect person. When in reality I was just a McDonalds that ended up hurting herself ie her brand, hurting those around her ie customers, and then there was no way of salvaging anything. I had to be rebuilt, torn down, made new.

    The bulldozer in my life has a name, an ugly, cruel battle of the mind that lead me down dark, dangerous paths. And, when the depression had lifted, the suicide attempt was over all I had was broken pieces of what I thought would be a beautiful life. Why did they have to tear down a perfectly good McDonald’s because there was nothing left to save. For a while I sat in my own rumble, rolled around in dirt of my despair, pity, and brokenness until I met an incredible architect. He was big man on campus kind of big. Larger than life. And, HE me that promised me that when HE got done rebuilding me I would not only be made new, I would be the best damn McDonald’s on the planet.

This is my story. I am a Good Girl rebuilt. Just like it says in Jeremiah 31:4 “I will rebuild you and you will dance again.” You are about to witness my rebuilding, and in the end we’ll all have the most epic dance party ever heard of.

“I will rebuild you, and you will dance again.” - Jeremiah 31:4

Present, Mental Health Recovery 2019

If this projects speaks to you, and you would like to support it you can donate to my GoFundme at GoFundme.com/teamgoodgirl or share this blog

GGC Feature: The Colors of Robin Smith

There are a lot of moments when I think about all things I have lost because I talk openly about my suicide attempt and mental health: friends, family, job positions. Then I question myself.

“Why did I start writing about this dark part of my life?

“Who really cares?

“Why does my story even matter?”

Then people like Robin Smith remind me, a story is most powerful when it is shared. Hearing my story of surviving suicide inspired Robin to start sharing her own. She chronicles her experience in her new blog and is finding new ways to live mentally well. And, like me Robin has found the freedom of sharing your story, and the healing.

“I got tired of living in the shadows,” she says.

I got the pleasure of capturing Smith’s story because she won one on my Instagram contests. The winner receives a free coffee date with me, and a interview feature on my Good Girl Chronicles blog.

Sitting across from Robin, you are drawn in by colors. The purple and teal hair dye that accentuates her light blond hair, her blue eyes, the tattoos that cover her forearms.

It’s a stark contrast to the blue, purple, and yellow scars she bore on her face just two years ago. Those colors covered her fair skinned face when she collapsed in her home and developed Bell's Palsy. Doctors said it was her body’s reaction to her attempted overdose. They were surprised she survived considering the amount of drugs she had taken.

“It was horrible. I went from two days prior wanting to die, to actually thinking in that moment I was going to die.”

Even scarier, Robin said was the fact that in the emergency room she heard doctors giving her a grim diagnosis, saw the faces of her distraught loved ones, heard their cries; yet could not utter a single word. The entire left side of her face was paralyzed and the Bell’s Palsy also affected her speech. It was if she was trapped inside of her own body.

“I was in my body, but could not move. It was horrible. My face seized up, and my teeth were clenched shut.”

“ All I could do was watch and hope to God that they could fix me,” she says fighting to hold the tears behind her blue eyes. Her face turns red, and her voice quivers as she recalls this day.

“It really is a miracle I survived.”

Robin was released to a behavioral health care unit, but says the prescribed medications did not help much. She rode a roller coaster of with intense manic periods often characterized by feelings of euphoric, erratic behavior, and followed by deep depressive episodes.

“By September, I thought I was losing my mind.”

For six months she struggled to find help from different physicians, and was even rejected admission to a behavioral unit after another suicide attempt.

“I’d go see doctor and they would just ask me what kind of medication I wanted. I thought to myself isn’t it their job to tell me what I need?”

Finally, by late 2017 Robin found care and a new diagnosis that changed got her on track. A clinician diagnosed herb with bipolar disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder. The National Institute of Mental Health describes bipolar disorder as a brain condition that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. The diagnosis explained so many of her mood swings.

“It wasn’t surprising,” she said. “It’s something that should have been diagnosed sooner,  If someone would have taken the time to talk to me and not just throw medication at me.”

Smith takes medication for her mental health condition now, and says counseling helped strengthen her relationships with her boyfriend Mike and her two step daughters.

“Therapy was a group effort. It was me, Mike, and my parents. We all went to therapy together. Everybody works together. Because it (bipolar disorder) did not happen overnight I knew I could not restart everything overnight.”

Smith has learned how to manage the highs and lows of bipolar disorder. She is more open with her loved ones, and has joined a kickboxing exercise community to help her fight through the hard days.

“It still a struggle everyday. Life is tough, but you can be just as tough,” she says.

This is the strength she wants to pass on to her stepdaughters.

The desire to be a beacon of hope is why she why she dyed her hair purple and teal> These colors symbolize suicide prevention. She also has tattoos on her forearms in teal and purple with two quotes that remind her to keep living in the moment.

The tattoo on her left arm reads “We all live with the scars we choose,” and the one on the right says, “No day but today. 525,600 minutes.” An homage to the musical Rent and a reminder that even though her past was painful, healing, and recovery is possible everyday.

 

“We are not damaged. I am not damaged.”

Smith works at an accounting firm, enjoys kickboxing, and playing with her three Jack Russells.

 

 

Sneak Peek of Our April Storytellers

Introducing Our April Storytellers

April 19, 2019

Dave & Buster's Lynnhaven Mall, Virginia Beach, VA

Introducing a few of our storytellers for our April show!

 

 

Storytellers

Neisha Himes, Founder, GROW Foundation will share a story called “Victim to Victor: How I became Wonder Woman”

Neisha Himes is a survivor of domestic violence and devoted advocate.  After leaving the toxic

relationship in late 2012, she began telling her story years later via her gift of Spoken Word.  Known to the poetry community as ‘Beautiful Dizaster’, Neisha has featured on many stages and often uses her talent as a method for bringing awareness.  Her courageous transparency soon led to requests to share her story on platforms such as: radio interviews, high school and college awareness programs, community seminars, out of state conferences and more.  Along with her speaking engagements, she began volunteering at a local shelter where she created a journaling group to encourage self-expression and healing through the art of writing.  She later became certified as a Human Trafficking Victim Advocate with the Virginia Beach Justice Initiative and remains an active volunteer with the organization.  In August 2016, she founded G.R.O.W. Foundation and currently leads a team of nine board members and volunteers in carrying out the organization’s mission.  In July 2017, she left her career as a Real Estate Paralegal to join a local city prosecution office, holding a position as their Domestic Violence Victim/Witness Advocate.  Additionally, Neisha serves as an active member of the Hampton Roads Military & Civilian Family Violence Prevention Council, the 24th Judicial District Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the African American Leadership Task Force and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.  In honor of her work, Neisha was recognized by Investigation Discovery (in collaboration with ‘People’) as their ‘Inspire A Difference: Hero of the Month’, featured on PBS channel’s ‘Virginia Currents’, and the recipient of the YWCA’s ‘2019 Woman of Distinction Award’, along with a host of local accolades.  Her unwavering dedication and passion to help others is the driving force behind the mission of G.R.O.W. Foundation.

 

 

Raymond Barnes, Registered Peer Recovery Specialist, State Peer Trainer will share his recovery journey.

Raymond was born in Jamaica Queens, New York and is the oldest of five children. Raymond says  he had a pretty normal upbringing. Raymond says he is the child of a functioning alcoholic, an enabling mother, and has been around some sort of drugs or alcohol since he was little. Raymond struggled with drug addiction in his adult life. He has been clean for several years now, but still considers himself an addict living in recovery. He now uses his lived experience as a Peer Recovery Specialist to lead a life saving recovery program in Norfolk, and train other to become peers also.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nadejeh Minerva, Hampton University Graduate, Founder #MyStrengthisBeautiful Inc.  

 

Nadejeh Minerva is a Brooklyn born, Hampton University graduate, as well as a survivor of sexual

assault and domestic violence. She founded #MyStrengthIsBeautiful Inc., to empower survivors like herself. Her foundation is determined to nourish the emotional, mental, physical, social, and professional levels of each survivor, so their transition is made easier. Her story is “My Strength. My Story. My Glory”, the victory she never thought she’d see.

 

 



 

 

Get Your Tickets to this powerful night of storytelling.

April 19, 2019

Dave & Buster's Virginia Beach, VA

6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Tickets $10

$15 at the door

Click here to buy!

 

 

 

 

Also check our highlights from our March show.

 

Donate to our cause at www.gofund.com/teamgoodgirl